Leadership traditionally has been thought of as “doing the right thing” while management has been defined as “doing things right.” Contemporary leadership combines these…

The topics elementary- and middle-school students today study are complex and often difficult to understand. Seldom is an issue as simple as it appears…

People who are raised in the industrial world and who get enthused about systems thinking are likely to make a terrible mistake. They are…

Managers in today’s organizations are continually confronted with new challenges and increased performance expectations. At the same time, they are bombarded by a bewildering…

Causal loop diagrams are an important tool for representing the feedback structure of systems. They are excellent for Quickly capturing your hypotheses about…

In the summer of 2006, a group of local foundations supported the leaders of Calhoun County Michigan (population 100,000), in developing a 10-year plan…

World events over the past several years have highlighted the need for new ways of exercising leadership. Such events include the ongoing crisis in…

As members of communities and organizations, many people feel their days (and their energy!) being consumed by contentious conflicts between diverse stakeholder groups. Organizations…

Our efforts to understand and intervene in organizational events have a persistent bias: to interpret phenomena from a personal framework. In other words, situations…

Recently, I had a long conversation with my fifteen-year-old daughter, Elise, about why she had to learn algebra. I had helped her with a…